


Yet Nothing Is Lost

by ArtemisTheHuntress



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Dogs, Dogsled Away From Your Problems, Dogsledding, Gen, So Many Dogs, Solid Snake's Alaskan Depression Cabin 200X, pre-MGS1, the ghost of Gray Fox (maybe. it's ambiguous)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2018-12-11
Packaged: 2019-09-16 01:54:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16944762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArtemisTheHuntress/pseuds/ArtemisTheHuntress
Summary: Prompt: "Pre-MGS1. Something sparse, gothic and bleak with David taking his dogs out into the Alaskan snow to find... something."Solid Snake is trying as best he knows how to live his life and find some sort of place for himself in Alaska.  But the past is hard to ignore, and his ghosts won't let him go so easily.





	Yet Nothing Is Lost

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Supply Drop 2018! (hope there aren't too many Dog Names, haha.)
> 
> Lots of thanks to [darkmagicians](https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkmagicians/pseuds/darkmagicians) for beta-reading!

The sky was as still as the snow, and nearly as white. They’d gone out a few miles until the land opened up into an expanse of gray-white, separated only from the expanse above by the black mountains creating the horizon. Snake stepped on the sled’s brake and called his dogs to a stop. Chloe grumbled a little – she wanted to run! – but the rest of the eight-dog team flopped down, settled in nicely, alert, tails wagging, waiting for the treats they knew were coming.

“Hey, settle down,” he said, as white-and-gray snouts mobbed him, looking for treats and pets. “Settle down, guys, you’ll all get your turn.”

His voice was startling, every time he heard it. Felt unreal. Out here on the ice, a human voice didn’t belong.

The dogs didn’t seem to care. Roy shoved his wet nose into Snake’s face.

Snake fed them, checked them, and while they were content and pleasantly distracted, he turned his attention to Holly. Sweet girl, strong, almost three years old, a reliable wheel dog, with big blonde-brown patches in her soft fur. Named for someone special. He’d stopped here to check on her, specifically.

“Holly,” he said, sitting down in the snow beside her. “To me, girl.”

She pricked up her ears and looked over at him, then lay down next to him and started chewing at her paw.

“Holly, no.”

She gave a sullen whine, but stopped. She didn’t like wearing the booties.

Snake began petting her, running his hand over her head and down her back, then over her head and down her shoulder, then down her leg and holding her paw with the bright orange dog booty over it. She growled a little bit, low in her throat without baring her teeth yet. This was progress, but Snake was starting to think that this was as much progress as he was going to make. She tolerated him touching her paws now, which was a marked improvement from a year ago when she would snap at him if he tried. It was never to seriously hurt, never a real bite; but she’d pull away and growl and nip at him if he tried to put booties on her or tried to wipe the snow off her feet before she could track it in the house. He was hoping that with time and training and lots of treats she’d lost her foot-shyness, but the booties were still bothering her. She probably wouldn’t ever make a competitive sled dog.

Snake scratched her behind the ears. She stopped growling and nuzzled into his leg. That was all right. She was a good girl.

He sat there, petting her, staring at the snow above her head and fading from thinking about dog training to thinking about nothing at all, when the other dogs began to whine.

Snake looked up. “Guys, don’t get jealous, there’s plenty of me to go arou–”

The dogs weren’t whining at him. They were looking away, over the snow. Cooper, always an excitable boy, began to bark.

Snake followed their gaze, and saw what they were so agitated by. His breath froze in his body, his mouth suddenly dry in the clean cold air. He pulled off his goggles, and his eyesight was seared by the blinding light from the snow and the sky, but he could feel his heart in his throat, his ears, his fingertips, and he had to know that he was seeing this right.

When his eyes adjusted, the scene hadn’t changed.

Maybe twenty yards away, stark against the snow, an arctic fox sat, watching him. It had the expected stocky round body, the thick fur, the fluffy tail and small ears, and like all the other arctic foxes Snake had seen, it was decked out in a thick coat for winter. Except that, instead of pure white, this one stood clear against the background in a coat of dark, resplendent silver.

It was deep into December. The foxes should all be white by now. But this gray fox had found Snake. And it just sat, watching him.

Snake stared at it, meeting its eyes. The dogs continued to whine and bark, wanting either to chase it or to drive it away. The fox didn’t seem bothered.

Snake let out a long, controlled breath, trying not to let his body shake. Trying to use the sudden hyperawareness of his own presence, the sudden oppressive heat under his heavy coat and winter layers to ground himself, to focus, to prevent himself from getting lost, from detaching from his body completely. His breath, warm in the freezing air, created a dense cloud of white in front of his face. He tried to focus on that. Real, grounded.

When the breath-cloud dispersed, when Snake looked again, the gray fox had turned tail and become a dark spot retreating into the distance. In a moment it had darted over a ridge and disappeared.

⸻

The warmth of his cabin was like a physical force that hit him when he stepped in the door. Snake almost choked on the thick air. He lit up a cigarette, trying to clear his lungs, clear his head. On the way back home, he’d felt fine, the team had seemed fine, but it was only after he’d unhitched the dogs and unpacked the sled and returned to the security of his own house that he realized his legs were still shaking and he couldn’t actually focus. The cabin was too hot, too small, too enclosed. His chest felt tight. Suddenly his world didn’t feel… well, it had never felt safe, but he thought he understood it, had found some niche where he could settle into it and disappear in it.

Max ran to greet him at the door. He was a useless sled dog, but a very good boy, and he wagged his tail so fast it blurred in Snake’s vision. He jumped up with his paws on Snake’s chest, as if to say, _I missed you! I love you! You’re back!_

Beside Max, another frequent face to greet him at the door, Tilly heatbutted his thigh and whined gently. Even after Snake pushed Max off, Tilly continued to press against him, moving as he moved. It was sweet of her. It made his heartrate slow down, a little bit, but he couldn’t deny that the fact that she was taking so much interest right now was a worrying sign. Tilly was very, very good at determining when Snake was on the verge of a panic attack or a PTSD episode, and she was always there to help.

He didn’t want to deal with this right now, but he didn’t shake her away.

Instead he walked into the kitchenette, not big enough or demarcated enough from the big living space to really count as a separate room, and pulled a can of beer out of the mini-fridge. He didn’t want to and didn’t _have_ to interrogate whatever his body was trying to make him feel right now. It was easier to just dull everything. Tilly looked up at him with sad, worried eyes.

The familiar sparse kitchen was a comfort, at least. A space he knew and could trust. A human space, _his_ space, separate from the arctic world. A place where he could forget what he saw today, write it off, and move on. Where he could settle back into the patterns he’d worked to establish on his own for the last two years.

He leaned against the rickety kitchen table and downed half the beer in one go.

On the table was the little personal clutter he kept out – a pad of paper, a pencil, last month’s copy of _Alaska_ magazine, and a mild cloud of hanging guilt. He was going to miss the deadline again. This was an overture he’d begun last year, an effort to engage with the rest of the world on some level, prove he still had something to give now that he was cut loose from the military. He wasn’t sure if it was working. The editor liked his first freelance article – “You have so many dog stories! This is great!” – and had set him up with a regular column, 500 words ten times a year of some interesting anecdote about his dogs and their experiences in the Alaskan wilderness. They liked his “simple, direct, rugged and yet somehow poetic and very observant style – a real backcountry man!” It was grounding, in a way. Proving he could engage with other real people, without having to get _involved_. And besides, it was a little bit of extra income to support the dogs. Snake got a pension check every month from the government (more regular, and generous, than most – ostensibly thanking him for his world-saving service, though he knew full well it was to bribe him into silence and remind him that they still owned him, should they ever choose to call him back). Every check was made out to “David Adderson.” A new government-assigned identity after Outer Heaven. Someone’s idea of a joke. He didn’t challenge it. He hardly remembered the surname he grew up with anyway, and he hardly had any family to object.

He published the _Alaska_ column under the name David Plissken. His idea of a joke, maybe. This could be his.

But he’d now missed the January deadline for his next expected article, and was likely to sail past the February one too. He looked down at the paper, and a few dull sentences stared back at him, accusing. He hadn’t added anything in weeks.

(He wasn’t made to create. It didn’t come naturally to him, nothing about remaining alive and present in this world came naturally.)

It would make sense to work on his article now, while he was thinking about it, while the dogs were fed and happy and he had nothing else to do but drink through all the beer remaining in his fridge. It might take his mind off today. Might take his mind off the past. Help him lose himself in something personal and silent.

Instead, and he couldn’t tell if this was a victory or a failure even as he did it, he walked back across the room and dialed his old wall phone.

The phone picked up on the tenth ring. “Hello?” the voice on the other end said, sounding suspicious.

“Master Miller,” Snake said. “It’s David.”

“Oh, Dave. Hi.” Miller sighed – he’d tried, more than once, to say _we’re both civilians now, Dave, you can call me Ben_ but had long since given up, and Snake was grateful. “Haven’t heard from you since… well. A while. You doing all right out there?”

Snake grumbled a wordless non-answer. Then he said, “I saw an arctic fox today.”

“Stop the fucking presses. You saw an arctic fox? In the _arctic?_ ”

“Master…”

“Hey, who am I to judge. Any reason to break radio silence and let me know that you are, in fact, still alive out there.”

“I wanted to ask,” Snake said, hesitating, choosing his words carefully to avoid sounding like an idiot, “if it’s possible for an arctic fox to be gray this late into the winter.”

“Oh.” Even over the phone, Snake could hear Miller deflate, suddenly understanding. “You’re thinking about– you saw a gray fox, huh.”

“Yeah.”

“Well. Yeah, it’s possible. It happens. Arctic foxes come in two genetic color varieties – the white morph and the blue morph.” Of course Miller knew this. “The white morph is the common one. 99% of arctic foxes are white in the winter and gray-and-brown in the summer. But a small number of arctic foxes are blue-morph foxes, which stay blue-gray all year round. That’s probably what you saw. It’s rare, but not unheard-of.”

“Oh.” Snake wasn’t sure what he’d wanted the answer to be.

“What’s interesting,” Miller continued, to fill the empty space, “is that the blue morph gene is dominant over the white morph gene. But the vast majority of arctic foxes are white ones. Which just goes to show, sometimes the thing we say is ‘stronger’ might be detrimental to our actual ability to survive. Something to keep in mind.”

“Hghh. Are you going to start talking about the fuckbrain again?”

“Maybe. Maybe I just mean you shouldn’t be so stoic and should call more. A ‘hey, I’m still alive and my dogs haven’t eaten my frozen corpse’ once a month or so would be good for both of us.”

Phone calls were tiring tasks, but he probably wasn’t wrong. “I’ll try, Master Miller.”

“Hm.” An awkward silence descended again, and lasted too long for Snake to be able to comfortably hang up, so he just held onto the phone and watched Max chew on the end of his own tail until Miller said, “So, how are Maggie’s puppies? They must have been born by now, right?”

“Oh. Yeah. She had them two and a half weeks ago. I’d been meaning to call and tell you. There are four of them. They’ve started opening their eyes now. Two are walking.”

“Nice. I might have to take Cathy out to visit you and meet them, she’d love it.”

“Is Cathy coming?”

“Yep. Flying into Anchorage tomorrow. Nadine eventually started talking to me again after… well. The fiasco two years ago. She didn’t exactly want to hear ‘How the hell was I supposed to know they’d chosen Christmas Eve to ask me to drop everything and–’ Anyway. She finally agreed to let me host Christmas for Cathy this year. I’ve been decorating all week. Cathy’s still young enough that flying out to visit daddy in beautiful picturesque Absolutely Nowhere, Alaska is still an adventure and not an annoying chore. She’s eight now, I figure I’ve got a couple more years. But I have to make it _fun_ , I have to do more than just prove I’m not gonna spend all day on the radio with the army this time, and I’m fighting an uphill battle because last year Nadine got her a razor scooter and she spent all day outside playing on it because in SoCal you can do that. I’m banking on the novelty of playing in the snow, because in SoCal you _can’t_ do that. But I need a _clincher_. I need to make this the best god damn Christmas Cathy’s ever had. Do you think I could get away with giving her a puppy that she’ll absolutely fall in love with and take back to California before Nadine can say no?”

“I’m keeping all of Maggie’s puppies.”

“Christ, kid, you can’t keep _every single_ dog. How many do you even _have_?”

“Forty-six now. And I can.”

“Christ,” Miller said again. Then, “But, hey –” His voice got strained, a little bit. “You’re welcome to come over for Christmas, if you want. Cathy will be excited to see you, though you’ll probably have to dress up as Ariel or something. Or whichever Disney movie she’s decided is her favorite one this time. But – you’re welcome, here.” He paused. “But if you’d rather stay home, get drunk, and try to forget about everything, I wouldn’t blame you. Sounds like you’ve got a lot on your mind.”

Snake knew he wouldn’t take Miller up on the offer. “Thanks, Master Miller.”

“You should come over at some point. Maybe for New Year’s. Always better to celebrate new beginnings than old bullshit anyway.”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

“You’ll drive yourself crazy if you keep to yourself too much. Trust me. I know from experience.” His laugh sounded very forced.

“Yeah. Thanks, Master Miller.”

“Just take care of yourself, kid.” And Miller hung up.

Snake put down the phone. He was almost thirty. Someday he’d be sixty and Miller would be ninety and still be calling him “kid”. It was almost frustrating and almost reassuring. Master Miller was trying.

He should probably be trying, too.

Snake moved toward the table, and Max looked up, hoping that moving back towards the kitchenette meant treats, or a caribou bone. Snake pet him aimlessly – he was a greedy boy who begged constantly, but so friendly, always wanted to be underfoot – and looked at the half a paragraph, the blank paper, the dull pencil. He sat down sideways on the one beat-up chair, his back to the table, to rub Max’s belly, finish the beer, reach for another, and shut out the knowledge that there was a world outside his cabin for the night.

⸻

He took his dogs into town the next day. The sun shone weak and cold, and the sled sailed easily over the packed old snow, breaking through the still midmorning as clear and sharp as glass. Nothing like the fresh December air in your face for an hour and a half to clear up a hangover.

The nearest town with a food market and a library was twenty miles away, which was good for exercising the dogs, good for getting out of the house, and about as close as Snake wanted to be to civilization. A long time ago, the town of Camp Colby had been a settlement for prospectors looking to strike it rich; town lore says that one did, and then promptly went home. Now it was home to several hundred full-time residents, who all knew each other and all minded their own business. And the streets were friendly to dogsleds and snowmachines.

Molly Minnity, the owner of the auto body shop, was the only person out and about when Snake pulled up to what passed for “downtown.” She smiled at the six dogs, who all wagged their tails in excitement at the idea of attention from another whole person, and nodded at him. “Mr. Adderson.”

Snake nodded back. “Ms. Minnity.”

She pet Chloe, the lead dog, who was closest to her and too well-trained to run up and demand pets but excited for the possibility anyway. Then Molly Minnity walked away to continue her errand, and Snake called his dogs forward to continue his.

Snake picked up dog food at the post office (the quantity he needed was easier to order directly), and cigarettes and people food at the market and the butcher’s and the one cafe/bakery that stayed open through the winter. A pair of wildlife researchers who’d stopped at the cafe on their way west were so enamored with his dogs that they immediately bought six Christmas-tree-shaped dog biscuits that Josie the barista kept in a jar on the counter. These weren’t _nice_ trail treats, like whitefish strips, but five of the dogs were over the moon about it; Stanley, a bulky swing dog, was the only one who took the treat and held it politely in his mouth until the researchers went back inside, then buried it in the snow. He’d never been a fan of store treats.

Last errand before turning around and heading home (Snake didn’t have much of a reason to stick around) was another two miles away. The Camp Colby Public Library was a small, square building on a winding unplowed road, huddled under pine trees so big they blocked out the sky. Snake gave the dogs some beaver jerky to keep them occupied while he went in.

The library was quiet inside. No other visitors at noon on a weekday; the only other person inside that Snake could see was the teen boy behind the circulation desk.

Snake dropped the books he’d finished ( _Nature and Other Essays_ and _A Theory of Justice_ ) into the return bin, and came back a few minutes later with three others for checkout: _The Selfish Gene_ (second time), _The Gospel of Nature_ (fourth time), and _Myths and Legends of the Alaskan Inuit_ (the only book whose subject list specifically mentioned arctic foxes that wasn’t aimed at small children).

The boy at checkout snorted when he saw them. Snake recognized the kid; Jason, a Camp Colby teen who was chatty even when his visitors weren’t, which was how Snake knew that he was Iñupiat on his dad’s side, had gotten accepted into University of Alaska Fairbanks but was taking the year off to work two jobs to earn some money, and had read every western that the library had, which was far too few.

“You don’t want this one,” Jason said, holding up _Myths and Legends_. “It’s from the 60s and by a white guy and it’s garbage. We’ve got a better book if you’re looking for Native stories by the _actual_ storytellers. _Unikkaaqtuat_ by – whatever, you won’t remember his name or know how to spell it. Here –” Jason took away _Myths and Legends_ , stuck it under the desk where Snake couldn’t get it back, and pulled out a slip of paper to write down a call number – “This is the book you want.”

It would have felt stupid as hell to explain why he was after books about arctic foxes, so Snake ended up leaving the library with _Unikkaaqtuat_ as suggested. The dogs perked up when he left the building, wagging their tails and jumping to their feet to greet him like they thought they’d never see him again.

“Kept you waiting, huh?” he said, while he pet them and checked their harnesses. “All right, guys, you win, it’s time to go again.”

He put the books safe into the equipment bag, stepped onto the back of the sled, and called “Ready? Mush!”

The dogs, straining with the energy of holding back from running, let loose. With excited yips and tiny howls they burst into a six-dog rush of sleek gray energy, alight with the joy of running, to take them all home.

⸻

Snake woke up that night to his dogs howling.

He had no idea what time it was. The darkness around him spoke of the dead of night, but the 19-hour winter nights disoriented any attempt to tell. It didn’t matter. He was jolted awake, tense and aware in an instant, at the first sound outside. It wasn’t a howl for fun, and it wasn’t a cry of pain; a dog was confused and distressed, disturbed by something.

Another dog outside howled to join in, and then another, and then the dogs who piled around and on top of Snake on his pallet on the floor. They weren’t sleeping peacefully; even they were already awake and confused and tense with energy. When they added their voices, howling at the windows and at the rest of their brethren in the kennel outside, it filled the house and pierced into his ears, into his brain.

He pushed himself up on his elbows, hands gripping hard into the cheap mattress, shaking off the dogs around him. “What’s going on?” he demanded, glaring at them. No longer pressed in a lazy pile of warm furry bodies, the air around him was suddenly very cold.

Several of the dogs paused their nervous prancing and pacing to look over at him. Some looked like they wanted him to solve whatever this was, some like they wanted him to stay out of their way. Many of them ignored him completely, continuing to cluster tensely around the window and wail like they were trying to call down the sky.

Snake took a long, slow, stabilizing breath, unclenched his fists, and stood up. The dogs got out of his way. He walked across the room, reached up onto one of the high storage shelves, and pulled down a handgun.

He had a bolt-action rifle, which he used regularly for hunting, but this semiautomatic handgun was one he hadn’t used yet in the two years that he’d owned it. He’d hoped he wouldn’t have to.

Gripping the firearm in one hand and taking a fresh magazine in the other, Snake pushed his way through the mass of dogs crowding the window. Something outside was agitating them, something frightening. Or threatening. It might be a bear. (Or it might be the US Army, come to demand him back again, coming to collect once more what they owned.)

His ragged breath was loud enough in his ears that he could hear it even over the distress of the dogs. He pressed up to the window.

Nothing moved outside. Even the wind was still. There was no scene of danger, no approaching threat. The fading moonlight glittered on the snow, sending soft blue shadows that defined every dip and swell.

And like a shadow shining silver under the low waxing moon, the gray arctic fox sat silently. Its paws were tucked under its curled tail. It did not seem disturbed at all by the unrelenting noise from the dogs. It looked like it was just fine waiting.

Snake’s long, shaky breath froze onto the cold glass, blurring his view. The dogs pressed against him, trying to nose him out of the way, whining at being cut off. Snake shook his head sharply and wiped the frost off the pane; the view was streaky and no longer clear, but he could see the fox was staring directly at him now.

“Why are you here?” Snake demanded. His voice was rough from sleep and almost buried under the sound of the dogs, even inside his cabin.

The fox outside stood up, shook itself off, and languidly turned around and scampered into the distance until it was lost in the darkness.

The dogs lost interest, a few of them huffing indignantly at this boring end. They dispersed and began to circle and settle to get back to sleep.

Snake continued to stand at the window, staring off over the snow in silence.

⸻

Indigenous cosmologies in the arctic rarely make much of a distinction between the mundane and the magic. The world of humans is shared with spirits. Every person and every animal has a soul, all connected to each other and to the universe through breath and movement and life and death. There are spirits on the ice, in the wind, in the forests and lakes and oceans, and they need to be respected, because the world is theirs, too. If you disrespect an animal, it won’t give its life to you, and you’ll have a poor hunting season, and starve; disrespect the dead, and its ghost can hear, and find you. But respect an animal, give thanks for its life, and it will willingly give itself to feed you; and the dead can lend their strength to the living, if asked right.

Nothing is ever fully gone.

⸻

The sun wouldn’t be up for hours when Snake awoke again. In December, this was normal – the 10:30 sunrise didn’t allow the luxury of waiting – but unlike most days, he was determined. He had a purpose.

It was surprisingly easy to act when the decision had been made and everything that needed to follow was rote.

Setting the coffee to heat. Mixing the trail food – part dry kibble, part animal fat, part frozen fish, cooked into a slurry in a huge vat over his gas stove on the highest flame setting he could tolerate. Collecting and checking the harnesses and lines and dog jackets. Collecting and packing the gear in the sled. The dogs, used to the rituals of race prep, should have been excited, but few were. Most slunk around Snake, seeming uncomfortable, sensing that something was wrong. Tilly whined, high and sad, and stuck close to him, moving with him, having to duck out of the way when he nearly tripped over her.

He stepped around her, ignoring her. He was busy. It was good to lose himself for a while in the feeling of the slimy grayish fat that slid over his hands as he unpacked it, the screeching of the tablesaw as he cut up the fish, the ghost of roughness and ropeburn as he slid his fingers along the long gangline, the lukewarm coffee that he’d almost forgotten sloshing heavily in his one dirty mug as he drank it anyway. It was so much easier to focus on the immediate sensations of the familiar actions than on questions.

He was a soldier. He probably always would be. He was good at following a course of action, once laid out.

He chose ten dogs. A good solid team. And as the stars faded and the sky lightened with the approach of the sun, each minute by minute a new shade of blue so real it could steal your breath from your lungs, he harnessed them up and finished packing the sled.

The old adage about being darkest before the dawn isn’t true, it doesn’t even make sense. But it’s always coldest before the dawn. That’s true.

When the sky was watery and pale and the sun finally broke over the mountains, Snake was ready to go.

“Ready!” Snake called. “Mush!”

The dogs, alert to the signal, electric with excitement and nervous energy, didn’t need to be told twice. They took off into the wilderness, away from the roads, away from the towns, out towards where the fox had run.

⸻

They ran north, away from the sun, moving over the crusted snow sunken after days of clear weather. This was a familiar path to start on, a frequently-taken trail. The dogs seemed to lose their nervousness when they got into the rhythm of running. The sun was bright on the snow, and the shadows from the bristling trees created sharp stripes of black and white that broke up the landscape. The trees were sparse here. Snake tried to relax his grip on the handlebars, and kept his gaze straight ahead. He knew this area, and the dogs did too, and no one was concerned. No one had to be concerned. He knew where he was going. Had some sense of what he was trying to find.

He’d know when he got there.

The path through the woods opened up as the dogs continued to run the well-known course and Snake began to breathe more easily.

When the dogs broke out of the thinning forest and onto the open plains, the sun was climbing to its peak in the sky. The days moved fast, this far north, this late into the winter, the dull yellow sun wheeling with tremendous effort over the mountain crags and collapsing just as fast back down again, without ever making it fully overhead.

The blank expanse of snow ahead of them gave few landmarks to guide by. But Snake had a compass and the dogs had the sun and without the threat of obstacles, no risk of downed branches or logs hidden by snowdrifts, the dogs picked up the pace. They pushed north, out towards the ice.

It didn’t take long to reach the rough location Snake remembered. When the landscape looked right – each crag of the dark mountains on the horizon in the right place, each mound and divot in the snow casting gray-blue shadows in small arcs, each detail clear and vivid and trying to match against his memory – he called “Halt!” and stomped the claw brake. The dogs, taken a bit aback, stopped, and whined, and pawed at the snow. Snake got off the sled, stumbling into the snow until he caught the balance of walking again, careening alone up the rise to the left, breaking through the pitted ice crust to leave messy footprints in the packed wet snow beneath.

Once up the rise he could see it – the old sled tracks coming in from farther off to the side, and the broken-up trampled-down disturbance in the snow where he and his dogs had stopped to rest two days before. The wind had partially smoothed it over, and the half-melt under the sun and the re-freezing during the night left a new crust over the churned-up parts, but Snake hadn’t been particularly trying to hide his tracks. The evidence was unmistakable.

And irrelevant, anyway. Snake knew he was in the right place because, sitting on top of another gentle crest in the expanse of snow, on the other side of the small scoop, the gray fox was waiting for him. It looked like it had been very patient. It had known he would come.

It’s just a fox, some part of his mind said. It lives here. Maybe it has rabies and that’s why it’s acting so strange. You can still turn around, go home, stop this here. It’s what Master Miller would tell him to do – _“You’re giving in to the fuckbrain,”_ he’d say, a word he loved for its useful succinctness. _”The fuckbrain is scared and hurt and that makes it stupid and impulsive and likely to hurt you even more. It isn’t you and it doesn’t care about your well-being. And when you can recognize that your brain isn’t working on all its real tracks and the fuckbrain is taking over and telling you to do something destructive, that’s when you can start telling it to fuck off.”_ Ignore the fuckbrain. End this. Go home.

It’s what Gray Fox would tell him to do.

Instead, Snake staggered forward a few more steps, towards the fox. It didn’t startle, just tilted its head inquisitively.

“I’m here,” Snake said, knowing that it was probably unwise to announce his presence this deep into the harsh beautiful world that didn’t belong to him, a world that belonged to the animals and the spirits and the ghosts. His voice was swallowed up by the cold air and the emptiness. “What do you want?”

The fox twitched its ears, yawned, stretched, and then bounded off. Away from him. North.

Snake watched it go, frozen in place. Then he ran back to his dogs (faltered, stopped, and spent the next twenty minutes feeding them, checking them, diligently doing his duty by them – this broke through to being important, even now. He had to take care of the dogs, make sure they were safe and healthy and doing all right, this wasn’t up for debate on a far deeper level than anything else right now).

The dogs were shy of him, slinking or bristling in discomfort when he got close. His actions, while responsible, were rote and mechanical. This was a duty he couldn’t, wouldn’t, shirk, this went without saying, but the dogs sensed some change in him, something they didn’t like.

He didn’t care. The dogs were safe and well-fed and free from injuries. They didn’t have to understand or agree.

He hooked the dogs’ tuglines back to the gangline, got back on the sled, and pointed himself in the direction the fox had run off to.

It was an animal. It couldn’t move that fast, likely wouldn’t have gone that far.

It was an animal. Maybe. But all animals had souls, and something to say.

“Ready!” Snake called, and in his voice there was an intensity that made some of the dogs’ ears flinch. “Mush!”

One of the dogs – a wheel dog or team dog close to the sled – rumbled in something that was almost mutiny. But the lead dogs took off, and the rest followed, and the sled lurched forward.

⸻

Night began to fall at 3:00. By 3:30 the world was dark and the stars glinted cold and fixed in the sky, muffled here and there by streaky cloud cover. There would be no aurora tonight. Snake switched on his headlamp. The moon was half clouded over, and even on the reflective snow shadows blended with light into a featureless gray that could hide anything. He hadn’t seen the fox again, not yet. He thought he might have, out of the corner of his eye, but the sharp dark shadows swung about wildly every time he turned his head; it was impossible to trust anything that wasn’t directly in front of him. The open snow held few places to hide, but somehow too many things to cast shadows that moved and slid and warped as his team raced by. The dogs continued to run. 

Around seven at night (a meaningless time; the depth of night was the depth of night, as dark and cold as it would ever be) Snake guided the dogs into a shallow ravine, and stopped them there. It was the best place he’d find to camp, out here in the open – the lower elevation would keep them out of the wind and trap the heat, but the dip wasn’t steep enough that avalanches or slides would be a danger, or the dogs would have a difficulty pulling the sled back out.

He laid out straw for the dogs, an insulating layer to keep them from getting frostbite on the cold snow. Half the bale, less than recommended but necessary to conserve what he’d brought. He supplemented it with the tarp from the sled. The dogs had been so good. It made him feel guilty. This was the first emotion he’d felt all day, and he latched onto it, held it in place, gently but gingerly, like something precious that would try to bite him if he got too close.

He fed the dogs. Their food was protein-rich but cold, and the ones less used to camping whined and looked at him with big sad eyes, like they’d trusted him and didn’t know why he was hurting them like this; they should be home, in a nice warm cabin with nice hot food slush. Even the dogs more used to camping gave him unsure looks before nosing into their frozen kibble and fat and fish. They didn’t know why they were out here. Snake pet them, each in turn, rubbing their ears and giving them reassurances with no heart behind it.

For his part, he dug a trench into the snow and nestled his sleeping bag into it. He hadn’t bothered to bring a tent. The halfassed snow cave and the subzero-rated sleeping bag would keep him warm enough, and any extra weight that could be avoided should be.

He crawled into his sleeping bag, chewed on a cold military ration, forced himself to finish it even though he had no appetite. He _had_ brought reheatable trail food, which probably would have been more appealing and higher in calories, but the thought of pulling out the little kerosene camp stove, even with its blue flame as thin and controlled and soulless as a convenience-store razorblade, would be impossible, unbearable tonight.

Instead he pressed his face into the puffy black synthetic surrounding him and tried not to think about anything at all. Outside, the dogs shifted restlessly, and made small nervous howls at the blurry moon.

⸻

The predawn morning was cold, the stars covered up now by haze. Snake didn’t feel particularly rested, but once awake going to sleep again was impossible. His sleeping bag was hot and constricting, pinning his arms and legs, moving with his body; he made himself slow down, taking long tight breaths through clenched teeth as he unzipped and extracted himself into the sharp cold snow. He was distressingly sober, but his head throbbed anyway with the distracting ache of too-little, too-restless sleep.

The moon was down by now. By the clock it was morning, but the sky hadn’t even begun to lighten yet. Snake fumbled for his headlamp in the dark, turned it on.

In the disturbed snow, half-destroyed now because he hadn’t been able to see them when getting up, delicate fox footprints circled his little sleeping area. Someone had wanted to make sure he was still coming, still on his way.

Snake let out a long, controlled breath. He followed the fox prints with the light, traced them with his eyes until they disappeared back onto the thin frozen surface. Hard to tell, without much to go on, but they seemed to be pointing back north.

“Fuck you, Fox,” Snake said, and he didn’t quite know who he was talking to.

A few of the dogs had woken up when they heard him moving around; Snake put on his boots, got up, and walked over to wake the rest of them. None of them seemed enthusiastic, which was disquieting. Jackie and Fork were always sluggish wakers who needed their sweet time in the mornings, especially dark winter mornings, but Chloe and Cooper and Blueberry were normally excited to wake up and start the day, even after a night of roughing it on the trail. This morning, even they seemed grouchy and slow, even after they’d shaken off the stiffness from the cold night. They ate their breakfast quickly, and were restless as Snake put on their harnesses and secured their lines. No one objected. Chloe at least perked up when strapped into the gangline; hopefully a lead dog excited to get running again would liven up the team.

The advice every musher learned, the easy way or the hard way, was to trust the dogs, and listen to what they had to tell you. The dogs were worried – about the trail, about the fox, about him, about something – and he wasn’t listening.

He packed up the gear, scooped up and shook out a bit of the more salvageable hay, and ignored their worry.

He was efficient. The dawn still hadn’t yet begun by the time he stepped on the sled, ready to go.

“Ready!” Snake called, staring ahead, his voice like a gunshot into the still night. “Mush!”

The dogs hesitated, just for a moment. Chloe looked back at him, giving her tail a half-wag to ask, _are you sure?_ Snake’s glare didn’t waver, and Chloe took the cue.

With Chloe at the lead, the other dogs began to follow. Fork, Blueberry, and Iris were grumbling, a little, but they stopped within a few seconds as the dogs found their rhythm and became a purposeful team again, easing back into the simple delight of running that Snake wished he could share. They pulled the sled out of the dip in the land, back up to the snowy plain, and headed north.

⸻

Plenty of things are easier with a sled out on the open snow. There are fewer obstacles, a much better range of vision, more options for choosing the way. But without a marked road or forest path, the expanse can be disorienting, too easy to get off-course and never notice.

Snake watched the compass, watched the sun as it chugged above the mountains to his back. Watched the land as the shadows shortened and the snow became ice, as they climbed toward glaciers and the ground below became more treacherous.

The dogs didn’t like the ice, didn’t like how unforgiving and deceptive it could be under their feet. Didn’t like the way the lights and shadows shifted on it. Shifted under it. Followed the sled, darted away, came towards them again, swirling curiously, playing underneath the runners, under the layer of snow and ice too thin to hide them but hopefully thick enough to keep them uninterested in breaking through.

Snake knew he could see, in the backlit dapple of light and shade, the shape of a fox with them. Only out of the corner of his eye, gone when he turned to look, but following the sled, defined in the flame-bright glint of wispy snow and blue-gray ice.

Snake stopped looking. They pushed north.

⸻

The sun was low over the horizon when one of the dogs finally snapped. It was Jackie who couldn’t take it anymore; he’d always been a little skittish, prone to resource guarding despite Snake’s efforts to train him out of it, and protective of his space. Whatever the problem was – the hard slick ice underneath him, the shifting light, the long warped shadows, the distance from home, the unfamiliar path, a reaction to Snake’s own intensity – Jackie faltered in his stride, jerked sideways, broke up everyone’s rhythm, and then lunged at Iris when the abrupt yank on her tugline pulled her into him.

“Halt!” Snake shouted, slamming his foot down on the brake before the sled’s momentum plowed it into the two stopped wheel dogs now bunched between him and the snarling, fighting pair. He jumped off the sled – his legs were stiff and he stuttered in his stride, trying to warm them up, trying to run the few paces to the dogs. His balance was off, and the snow-dusted ice felt like it was moving deep, deep below.

He plowed through the circling dogs barking and pacing and jumping with the distressed energy of those who know something bad is happening but don’t know what to _do_ about it; they whimpered and met Snake’s eyes, as if saying, _You’re the one that knows what to do. This is wrong. Make it stop._

Jackie and Iris weren’t taking any notice of him. Jackie seemed to have lost it completely, barking and snarling in real anger as he lashed out, all his teeth showing when he bit at her, and Iris clawing and snapping and batting at him with her large paws, self-defense turned into rage.

“Get away!” Snake growled, grabbing Jackie’s harness, standing stiff-armed and refusing to flinch when Jackie whipped around and tried to bite him, too. “Stop it! Get down!” He dragged Jackie farther away, and kicked Iris back when she tried to take the opportunity to lunge at Jackie’s neck. “Both of you, get down! _Down!_ ”

Jackie was still squirming, trying to bite him. Iris snarled, all her teeth on display, but when Snake glared at her and repeated, “Down,” she begrudgingly obeyed, lying down on the now-cleared bare blue ice to lick the blood oozing from her leg.

The immediate danger past, Snake swept his gaze over the rest of the dogs, still tied in, crowding uncomfortably around. “Down! Everyone!”

There was something strained in his voice that they didn’t want to disobey. The rest of the team lay down, pressing together for reassurance.

Even Jackie was calming down. He still growled, but now it was more in indignance than violence, and he’d stopped thrashing. Snake let go of his harness. Jackie looked up at him, resentment in his eyes, and Snake glared back. Jackie lay down.

He didn’t actually hear the sound of ironic clapping. Didn’t hear anything but the sound of the rising wind. But he felt the shame of being caught losing control, the feeling that someone had seen this display.

He turned, knowing what he’d see. His back to the light, the sunset behind him setting the whole sky on fire in leaping hues of red and gold and casting the snow in thrown-off firelight, every detail of the glacial plain was framed in perfect sharpness. And ahead, as always ahead up the shallow slope, the gray fox stood and watched, flicking its tail as if to say, _took you long enough._

The wind was rising. Or maybe that was just the ringing in his ears, the way he couldn’t focus on anything but the shimmer of red light on the shiny silver fur of the fox’s head, the way the sunset mingled with the thick fur on its round body to give it the matted color of old and long-dried blood.

Once the fox was sure that he saw it, it turned and dashed away again (north, always north). It paused a few dozen yards away, then turned its head to glance back at him again. _Well? Are you coming?_

The sky to the northern horizon was darkening. If he kept running, he could follow the fox into the dark forever.

Behind him, Iris whined in pain. Snake realized that he hadn’t even checked her, hadn’t even made sure she was all right, and the crashing wave of guilt and responsibility shoved him back. He spun around. Iris was holding her paw close to her chest, licking it occasionally. Snake stepped over to her and knelt down beside her, stroking her head and her shoulders, rumbling something gentle and meaningless to help her stay calm. Iris’s leg had a nasty gash in it. The blood flow was slowing, partially because the mixture of blood and saliva was freezing to her fur and crusting the wound up with ice. He could feel the fox’s eyes on his back, but he was a musher, and he’d been weak and stupid but his dogs’ care and comfort came first, his dogs’ care and comfort always had to come first. Iris was the most pressing thing right now, and he was almost shocked at the rough swirl of _caring_ in his chest, truly caring about something. He hadn’t felt this in days.

Snake pulled off his gloves, scooped up some snow and held it in his hands until it had half-melted. Slowly, not wanting to startle her, he used the snow in his hands to wash off the blood, running his fingertips over her legs and chest to make sure there were no other injuries. There didn’t seem to be, at least, not more than scratches, not serious.

He returned to the sled and with his fingers now clumsy with cold he dug the first-aid kit out of the pack on the cargo bed. The disinfectant wipes were all he could really do right now, but were necessary; contrary to popular belief, dogs’ mouths were not particularly clean. He returned to Iris, let her sniff the wipe, and then gently, bracing Iris’s head with his elbow so she wouldn’t snap at him when it stung, he rubbed down the area around the wound. (She tried to snap at him. He held her muzzle out of his way.)

“Good girl,” he murmured, washing her leg off with snow again so that she wouldn’t get a mouthful of rubbing alcohol when she went back to licking it. “Good girl. I’m sorry, girl. I’m sorry.” She gave a pitiful half-wag of her tail, acknowledging his apology.

He continued to pet her, scratching her ears as he turned his gaze back up the slope. The fox was gone. The violent sunset had faded to a dull pink gradient into the oncoming stars.

He should put Iris into the bed of the sled. She could possibly run like this, but he wouldn’t let her. He would make sure she rested, at least for a while. Nine dogs could pull the sled. And if he kept going north, he’d find the fox again. He knew this. The fox would be waiting for him, guiding the way. He could –

He couldn’t. He knew this, too.

Snake had a day and a half’s worth of food left for the dogs. Three days’ worth left for himself if he ate in responsible amounts, and could string it out to five if he rationed it carefully. He could push north, abandon the sled, and then keep walking for another three days, following a ghost to the end of the earth, losing himself to the dark and the open ice and the eternal arctic night.

The base of Iris’s ears was warm. The dogs clustered and paced around him, waiting to see what he would do, what he would ask them to do. The sun had been eclipsed by the mountains. The stars were forming themselves into their constellations, all orienting themselves around the north.

He couldn’t. He had to get Iris home, and clean her leg properly, and stay wary for signs of infection. He had to monitor Jackie, to see if he could even stay with the rest of the team now. He had to make sure his dogs were fed and warm. Had a duty to make sure the rest of them, back in his cabin, weren’t abandoned. They needed him. He needed them.

And, besides, two years ago, he’d promised. It was a promise that had been hard as hell to keep, and didn’t really seem like it was going to get easier. But he wasn’t going to go back on it. Not now. Not yet.

“I’m not going to follow you, Fox,” Snake said, his words carried away by the wind. “I meant it.” And now, out on the ice, he felt very, very alone.

Iris nuzzled his leg. He needed to get her home.

Snake unhitched her lines and led her back to the sled. She’d never ridden in the sled before, but she loved riding in the bed of his battered pickup truck, so hopefully she’d find it a fun change.

He made sure all the other dogs got a snack. They deserved it, for putting up with him on this.

The world had lost all definition in the fading evening. Snake switched on his headlamp. Under the artificial light the glacial ice was inert, the shifting spirits gone.

He stepped onto the sled. “Ready!” he called, and the dogs stiffened to alert. “About haw!”

The relief absolutely filled the cooling air as the dogs sprang into a wide arc, turning the sled around to head home.

⸻

Snake went back to the Camp Colby library to return the books on New Year’s Eve. He figured he might as well; it wasn’t much of a detour, and it’d be nice to have a short break before his all-day ride south to Master Miller’s house, anyway. He could’ve just dropped the books in the return slot and left, but the place wasn’t busy, and Jason was behind the desk again, so Snake walked up to turn the books in personally.

“Oh,” Jason said, when he saw who it was. “You’re back already, huh?”

“Been reading a lot recently,” Snake said. “You were right. _Unikkaaqtuat_ was good. Interesting stories.”

Jason smirked, satisfied. He was going to do all right, Snake was sure. “Aren’t they?”

“Didn’t really get all of them, to be honest. But you could tell, they were real. That’s life.”

“Hah, yeah, that’s one way to describe them.” Jason took the books from Snake and started scanning them in.

“I think I’ve seen spirits,” Snake said. “Out on the ice.”

Jason shrugged, half in dismissal, half in agreement. “Who hasn’t?”

**Author's Note:**

> I've never been depressed in the snow in Alaska, but I _have_ been depressed in the snow, so this was... both remarkably easy and really cathartic in a lot of ways to write. (Also, how can I ever pass up the chance to write about Solid Snake And All His Dogs?)
> 
> The title comes from the essay "The Gospel of Nature" by John Burroughs.


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